Customer Support: Let’s Get Personal
Big companies and small business alike often answer letters and emails with dull form letters that make customers feel like a number rather than a valued client. You may have even fallen victim to this yourself. Ever sent in a complaint letter to a company only to receive a “thank you for writing” and a coupon – apologies not included? Sure, they can probably retain some customers by offering a couple bucks in savings, but for me, that’s a major turn-off. The company didn’t address my specific issue – in fact, I’m not even sure they read the letter I took precious time out of my day to type.
With form letter responses a common customer support practice, this is a great opportunity for you to stand out among the masses and show your customers just how much you care. Setting up templates in FuseDesk saves plenty of time, but don’t forget to personalize your response in a way that lets your customers know you’ve actually taken their individual feedback into account.
Voicemails and Evergreen Business System Emails Now Supported
Great news! If you get Google Voice voicemails, Vocalocity voicemails, or webinar chat emails from Evergreen Business System, we'll now treat them special in FuseDesk.
For Voicemails, we'll look in your Infusionsoft account for contacts with the phone number the call came from. If we find one contact (and only one), we'll link the email up automatically. If not, the email will still come "from" the person who left the voicemail, but remain unlinked.
Don't worry, if you have multiple contacts with the same phone number, you can still link the email up with one click after viewing the case.
Customer Support, Sealed with a K.I.S.S.
Whether it’s within your online help desk or in emails, when it comes to providing information for your customers, there’s one hard and fast rule – make it short and sweet. Or, as my mother always says, “Keep It Simple, Shapiro.”
You may have a tendency to be verbose in person – who doesn’t like to talk? – but your customers want answers, not anecdotes. Over-explaining a simple task can make your instructions lost in translation.
Example: Those little tags in your clothes that tell you how to launder them. “Wash cold with like colors” and “Dry clean only” are direct and to the point. But if I instead explained that when turning on your washing machine you should set the dial to cold and flip your shirt inside out, then pour 1 cup of detergent in with other clothes before shutting the door and switching the machine to start, it takes much more of your time and energy to find the key word – cold.
Plus, when’s the last time you sat down and read a full license agreement when downloading to the latest version of iTunes or Quicktime? Most of us don’t have that kind of time on our hands, so you’ve got to assume your customers don’t either.
How Not to Help your Customers
Just last month, a hardcore gamer named Dave contacted a company via email because he hadn’t received the gamecontroller he’d ordered over a month before. His inquiry and complaint about not receiving updates were both polite and valid, and yet the representative who responded was vague, curt, unhelpful and increasingly inappropriate in a chain of emails that ultimately landed him unemployed. You can – and should – take a look at the thread here.
It’s not only embarrassing to customer service and customer support teams everywhere, it’s downright laughable.
So what can we learn from customer service representative Paul’s blunder?
Reporting System Upgraded!
This week we're proud to roll out a newly updated and far more robust reporting system for all FuseDesk Applications, including yours!
The new reporting system allows you to:
- View data in a specific data range
- Group data by day, week or month (Thanks, Terry!)
- Download your report data to CSV (Thanks, Paul!)
In addition, we added two new reports by popular request:
Anticipating Customer Support Issues
It’s a new year and you know what that means – time to hit the gym for a couple weeks until another New Year’s
resolution bites the dust. However, when it comes to your company, it’s best not to sweep your 2012 goals under the rug. Hit the ground running and grow a loyal client base by enhancing your customer support program.
One of the best ways to ensure that you’re offering the best support possible is to anticipate customer support requests and questions before issues arise. Because take it from us, there’s only one thing worse than an angry customer – lots of angry customers!